


House of Wolves

by mercurybard



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 09:35:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11506650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercurybard/pseuds/mercurybard
Summary: The night the moon rises red, Gerard disappears.





	House of Wolves

**Author's Note:**

> Loosely crossed with The Elder Scrolls III: Bloodmoon, though all you need to know about the game is there's snow and werewolves.

The night the moon rises red, Gerard disappears. Bob comes down the next morning from his room above the meadhall to find Alicia curled on a bench, eyes red from crying. Mikey, it seems, threw her out of their house soon after moonrise. She had pounded on the door until it felt like her hands would break, but he wouldn’t answer her. All she heard were inhuman growls.

Mikey lies in the middle of their one-room cabin surrounded by shards of broken crockery. His limbs are splayed in a way that suggests he was utterly spent when sleep finally took him. He’s naked, his skin blue-white in the thin winter light. Ray just sighs, throws a blanket over him, and carries him to the bed where Alicia slips under the covers and clings to him desperately. 

“House of Wolves,” Ray mutters as he brushes past Bob, who can do little more than hover at the door.

***

 

Lyn leaves that afternoon. Frank—the world’s tiniest berserker—begs her not to go, but she straps on her snowshoes and hefts her pack even as they argue. In the end, Bob watches her walk out of the village and down the hill until it is impossible to tell the difference between her snow bear furs and the winter landscape around her. 

She’ll go to her cousin’s people and the village of exiles and outcasts at the fork of two mighty rivers to the south and west. When she returns after the Blood Moon has passed, she might come only to find herself a widow…and she knows it. There was something cheerless and grave in her eyes when she bid Bob farewell. It’s why Frank protested her leaving so violently.

***

 

Mikey stays two more nights barricaded in his house. On the fourth morning, the men of the village gather in the meadhall and demand that Ray (in charge since the moon stole their chieftain away) drive the monster from their midst.

He and Alicia look like two saplings intertwining as they cling to one another. Bob tries to look away—give them their privacy—but he can’t seem to tear his eyes away. And when the sun sets, Mikey too walks into the forest and disappears.

***

 

Alicia comes into the forge two days later. Bob had been contemplating making a sword, but her mind is too scattered to trust her with the precious sky metal. Instead, they make axe heads. 

She fouls the first one she attempts—the head cracking nearly in half under her furious pounding. With a snarl, she throws the glowing tongs across the lean-to and goes to throw the hammer as well, but Bob catches her wrist. It’s as if she had forgotten he was there, but now she turns all her futile rage on him, her small fists wailing on his chest. 

He lets her take out her fury and frustration on him for a moment, then scoops her up and tosses her into the nearest snow bank. 

Alicia hisses and spits and swears, but she doesn’t try to kick him when he offers her a hand up.

***

 

He knows, of course, where Gerard and Mikey have probably gone. There’s a cave—an ancient holy place—on the edge of the great glacier to the north. It’s said their ancestress first stumbled from that cave on two legs and lifted her hands to the distant yellow sun. 

It will be a three-day hike from village to the Cave of the Wolf Mother…if he’s lucky. Alicia calls him stupid as he packs; Frank calls him worse as he sharpens his twin hand axes. He ignores them.

Ray, though—who as chieftain in Gerard’s absence has the power to stop him—merely shakes his head when Bob approaches him for permission. “It’s insane what you’re setting out to do.” 

Bob shrugs, the heaviness of his pack weighing the gesture down. “It’s Mikey and Gerard. They’re no good at taking care of themselves even when they’re not under the moon’s sway.”

“All right, go.”

***

 

He finds a body on his second day in the forest. It lies facedown, naked and gray, dark hair fanning out across the snow. For a heart-wrenching moment, he thinks it’s Gerard until he rolls it over onto its back and sees an unfamiliar face staring up at him with lifeless eyes.

The corpse’s lips are curled back in a hideous, frozen grin. Bob’s stomach lurches as he scoots away on his butt. He’s seen bodies aplenty on the battlefield, but never one so crazed in appearance. 

This must be one of the Wolf Mother’s lesser offspring: a poor man bitten and infected with the Moon Madness. His day-skin was still cursed with the weakness of all plain men, and finally, he froze after the sun stole away his night-shape. 

It doesn’t look like a pleasant way to die, naked in the snow. Gerard and Mikey are direct descendants of the Wolf Mother, though. Their curse is in their very blood.

***

 

Bob remembers talking to Gerard beneath the moon (a safe, sane moon like a Southerner’s silver coin suspended in the sky) soon after he came to the village to take the place of the old blacksmith who hadn’t survived the long winter. They’d leaned against the side of the meadhall, ankle deep in snow, looking down the hill and smoking. Gerard had rambled on and on, gesturing expansively with his pipe. Bob just listened. 

It wasn’t until they’d turned to go inside that Bob realized his chieftain wore no shoes.

***

 

He finds the Cave of the Mother Wolf by the light of the red moon soon after nightfall on the fourth day. The cave mouth is a black scar on the red-tinged landscape of ice. He creeps close, hand on his axe, but there’s nothing inside except two bundles of clothes and supplies—Mikey and Gerard’s things.

Stones encircle a narrow dip in the floor, but no one has lit a fire here in several moon-turns. Bob sighs—he was right to come after all—and goes to collect firewood. 

***

 

By the time the Blood Moon sinks below the far horizon, a large fire crackles cheerfully. He dozed off beside it, his gloved hands tucked into his armpits to keep them warm, but a noise startles him awake.

Mikey staggers into the ring of firelight, graceless in exhaustion with blood smeared from his chin down his bare chest. He drops to his knees in front of the fire and blinks in confusion at Bob. Bob, in turn, tries not to stare at smudges of red that stain Mikey’s teeth.

“You…you shouldn’t be here,” he stammers.

Bob grabs one of the abandoned fur cloaks and tosses it to him. “Shut up.”

Mikey nods dumbly. Wrapping himself in the cloak, he curls up on the far side of the fire and quickly falls asleep.

***

 

Gerard tries to send Bob home when he finally wanders back to the cave just as the sun reaches its zenith. He rants and raves, flapping his arms like some bizarre, distressed snowbird, but Bob just ignores him.

“There’s a reason my family is called the House of Wolves. I know we haven’t had a Blood Moon since you arrived, but surely you’ve noticed Mikey and I aren’t exactly…normal.”

Given that his chieftain is currently standing in knee-deep snow without a scrap of clothing on and showing no signs of discomfort, Bob decides the question is rhetorical and goes back to sharpening his axes. 

“The sun’s going to set and then the moon will rise and then Mikey and I will transform and _eat you_.”

Bob glances up at the cave wall where the fire highlights deep gouges in the stone. When he looks back at Gerard, for a moment, all he can see is the face of the dead madman he stumbled over in the forest. Then, he remembers Alicia’s glare and the sight of Lyn’s back as she walked away. “No.”

It looks as if Gerard will protest, but Mikey cracks an eye. “Give it up, Gee. He’s not going to go.” And that settles it. 

***

 

As the moon rises, the brothers climb to their feet, exchanging a wordless look before slipping outside. Bob waits for the count of one hundred and then follows. Mikey has already vanished into the trees, but Gerard stands on the edge of the forest, head tilted back, his pale skin silvery red in the moonlight. He watches Gerard watch the sky for a moment, then his chieftain lets loose with a howl of anguish that rips into Bob’s chest. 

The change isn’t instantaneous. Part of Bob is thankful for that since he knows he will never be able to trick himself into believing this is something he dreamed up. Gerard swells up inside his skin until the flesh explodes off of him, brown-black fur in its place, slick in the moonlight with blood. 

Bob gasps. He can’t help it. For a moment, the beast that had been his chieftain looks back over its shoulder at him, and Bob can’t move. It’s as if his feet have grown root, pinning him to the spot under the werewolf’s gleaming gaze. Then Gerard turns away and lopes off into the trees. A howl rings through the still night air, greeting him. 

That’s it then. Now there is nothing for him to do except wait for the setting of the moon and pray that Mikey and Gerard won’t come back this way looking for an easy meal. He turns to go back into the cave and finds himself facing a wolf.

It is the largest wolf he’s ever seen and as white as the snow surrounding them. Bob tries to swallow, but his heart has relocated to his throat. His hands drop to the axes hanging from his belt, but he doesn’t pull them free, fighting down the reflexes that are screaming for him to defend himself against the inevitable lunge. 

_**You are right to fear.**_ It is the voice of the wolf, speaking in his head. He sways a little bit at the force with which she speaks. _**You are prey.**_ She moves forward, sniffing the frosty night air. There is nothing tentative in the movement of her sleek muscles. _**But you care for my favorite sons. Why?**_

He licks his lips. “They…they are good men.” He doesn’t say that he would follow Gerard anywhere because he’s not sure a wolf—even one as ancient as the one before him—could understand something as human as loyalty. Something as simple as fraternal love.

**_They hunt even as we speak. Do you not fear that they hunt your kind? That one day they will hunt you?_ **

“I trust them not to. Besides, I don’t think I’d taste very good.”

The Mother Wolf regards him with preternaturally bright blue eyes. Perhaps, Bob thinks, the joke wasn’t in the best of taste. Especially not when she bares her teeth, each as long as his little finger and sharp as knives. _**This land is changing**_ , she says finally. _**My sons face great struggles. Will you stand beside them?**_

“Yes.” He doesn’t have to think before he answers, but if he had he might remember the long nights in the meadhall, listening to Gerard weave stories from smoke and sparks. The days spent in the forge, Mikey perched atop a stack of firewood in the corner, watching him work. The way Alicia fits so comfortably into the circle of her husband’s arms. The fond, indulgent smile of Lyn’s that belongs to Gerard alone. “Yes,” he says again. 

**_Then I will spare you._ **


End file.
